Signaling Shift, City Reassigns Work Program To Jobs Agency

The city's employment commissioner told City Council yesterday that her department would take over a federal work force program from the city's welfare agency, underscoring a shift from the Giuliani administration's workfare policy.

The commissioner, Betty B. Wu, also told the joint session of the Finance and General Welfare Committees that the city was well on its way toward spending, on job training and placement services, millions of dollars that it had been warned it was in danger of losing.

''Let me reassure this committee that these funds have been wisely invested in programs and services that will be of value and direct benefit to our customers,'' she said.

Officials and advocates have long expressed concern that under former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, the city had not properly used funds under the federal Workforce Investment Act, which provides hundreds of millions of dollars to municipalities to create a ''one-stop delivery system'' for adults seeking new jobs and employment services. Under the act, which includes funding for youth programs, cities are to create career centers where job referrals, counseling, training and other services are provided in a single place and are offered to any adult, employed or not.

But state and federal officials have complained that the city had given authority over the program mainly to the Human Resources Administration, had focused too heavily on helping welfare recipients get jobs and had not offered enough training or support to them or to other people looking for work. State and federal officials, one of whom told a City Council committee in November that the failure to set up more career centers hurt the city's ability to help workers displaced after Sept. 11, had cautioned city officials that their actions were jeopardizing about $70 million in funding that remained unspent.

Yesterday, as administration officials sketched out their plans, they hinted that they would take a different approach, with Ms. Wu saying that her department ''would like to emphasize more employment training and education going forward.''

But Council officials remained wary, given that the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is planning to spend a large portion of the federal money on contracts that Council officials say are too heavily weighted toward job placement rather than training and education.

Jean Seltzer, the Employment Department's deputy commissioner of program management, said that the contracts provided for training. ''And I think that what we want to do is try to emphasize that side of the program more fully than perhaps that was emphasized in the past,'' she said.

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While the city could use the existing contracts during the transition, she said, it would focus more on training as it evaluated the programs. She also suggested that the department might call for a whole new set of proposals.

But administration officials could not say precisely how they were spending the money, what percentage would go toward training and education or how policy decisions would be made under the new arrangement.

''We would have liked to have seen much more information today,'' said Bill de Blasio, chairman of the General Welfare Committee. ''We hope the Department of Employment will focus on job training and education so that people can actually find jobs in this very difficult marketplace, but we didn't hear anything today that would give us satisfaction. The city's policy still seems to be to attempt to place people in jobs, but there are very few jobs to go around.''

Council members also expressed concern over cuts in the city's summer youth employment program, which Ms. Wu estimated yesterday would be able to employ about 21,000 young people if the administration's contingency plan for closing an estimated $5 billion budget deficit were to go into effect. Last year, officials said, the city's program was able to accommodate about 50,000 young job seekers.

Larry B. Seabrook, a Bronx councilman, asked Ms. Wu to listen to ''the drumbeat of the streets'' and not commit ''bureaucratic homicide'' by denying jobs to youth who would otherwise resort to crime.

''We do have every intention to hear the drumbeat on the street,'' Ms. Wu replied. ''I understand what you're talking about and I'm very sensitive to that.'' She added that she wished there were more money to devote to the summer youth employment programs.